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Where To Find The 2017 Nebula Finalists For Free Online

By JJ: The Nebula Finalists have just been announced, and if you’d like to check them out to see whether you think they’d be good contenders for your Hugo ballot, you can use this handy guide to find material which is available for free online.

Where available in their entirety, works are linked (most of the Novelettes and Short Stories are free). If not available for free, an Amazon link is provided. If a free excerpt is available online, it has been linked. (In some cases, you may need to scroll down the linked page and/or click on an “Excerpt” link to see the excerpt.)

Fair notice: All Amazon links are referrer URLs which benefit fan site Worlds Without End.

The Expanding Universe, Vol. 3 anthology which contains the novelette “Weaponized Math” by Jonathan P. Brazee is available for $0.99 on Kindle or to borrow from Kindle Unlimited (or the Kindle Owners Lending Library).

@Camestros: Ooooh, I knew the name sounded familiar — Gregory wrote “Second Person, Present Tense”, way back in 2005; an intense, unsettling story about free will as an illusion we cultivate, while actually all our actions are determined with no conscious decision at all. It really stood out for me when I ran across it in a bookstore.

ISFDB lists it as winning the Asimov’s Reader Choice awards, being anthologized a bunch of times, and being nominated for the Sturgeon award.

Camestros Felapton: About Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory. I haven’t heard of the book or the author I don’t think. Nice to see something unfamiliar – anybody know anything about it?

I haven’t read it, because the synopsis just did not appeal to me at all. I did get We Are All Completely Fine from the library a couple of years ago and read it, because it was a Nebula Novella nominee. I found it okay, but way too “superheroey” for my taste. That’s a bug for me, but I’m sure that, for a lot of people, it’s a feature. Tor has an excerpt of it here.

Wow, that is one singularly unremarkable story. It mistakes exhaustiive details about weaponry, ammunition, and sniper tactics for worldbuilding, and the only thing SFFnal about it is that it takes place on a planet which is specified as not being Earth.

Dunno how that got onto the Nebula ballot. If it made it onto the Hugo ballot, I’d No Award it. 😐

Those are absolutely the right top five movies for the Ray Bradbury Award, three of the four most nominated speculative fiction films at the Academy Awards, the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and an AFI Film of the Year in “Wonder Woman.” For the sixth spot on the Dramatic Presentation, Long Form ballot, I’d like to see “Blade Runner 2049” but I wouldn’t be upset if any of the rest of the Oscar nominated speculative fiction films — “War for the Planet of the Apes,” “Guardians of the Galaxy, V. 2,” “Beauty and the Beast,” or even “Kong: Skull Island” — ended up in the sixth spot. A long shot would be “It,” which is the highest grossing horror film ever but earned no nominations at the Academy Awards.

“The Good Place” is a worthy nominee, if a bit surprising because it’s a comedy. I’d like to see it on the Hugo ballot for Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. My picks for joining it would be “Game of Thrones” episodes “Spoils of War” or “Beyond the Wall,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” episodes “Offred” or “Night,” “Stranger Things” episodes “The Mind Flayer” or “The Gate,” “American Gods” episodes “The Bone Orchard” or “Come to Jesus,” and “The Leftovers” episodes “The Book of Nora” or “The Most Powerful Man in the World (and His Identical Twin Brother).” That last one is a long shot, as I expect “The Expanse” episode “Home” will be nominated instead. I wouldn’t be upset, as “The Expanse” won last year. Also, two episodes of “Game of Thrones” might end up nominated again as well, displacing another worthy contender.

Looking at those lists, I can say it really has been a good year for speculative fiction on both the large and small screen.

I forgot three likely and worthy nominees for Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. First, “Star Trek: Discovery” although I’m not sure which episode would best represent the series. The highest rated on IMDB is “Into the Forest I Go,” but that doesn’t excite me as much as the ones with Harry Mudd. Then there are the shows that imitate Star Trek, especially the “Black Mirror” episode “USS Callister.” Also, someone will have an episode of “The Orville” on their ballots. I think that show’s best episodes haven’t aired yet.